I wished to continue with the fun spirit of earlier post or wait for a sunny day that would have brightened the spirit (switch to last segment to see why I say this). Wished to tell in the same non-serious tone that the worst I feared as outcome of 'Mission Independence' (Link) had happened; after cooking food and eating the same for one week. I gained one kilogram of weight. Yes, there used to be wrong estimate on quantity of rice. But, more important reason had been, couldn't throw away any food even if it was in excess and swallowed the same. Can do that easily when someone else puts her effort in cooking, to set aside excess food-stuff when I am full. Which part of our brain plays the trick, fools us ... develops attachment for own doings even when it is beyond proportion defying all logic?
We three colleagues were on our way to Kolkata. How to handle work pressure, various expectations was one of the topic in our journey. The wonderful teacher-student relationship, the respect IIT teachers command from students are largely due to devotion the students see among teachers, the amount of effort, the hours they put in, the multitudes of responsibilities they handle.
IITs started with an aim of providing right manpower to industries in post-independence era. UG teaching was the focus. The brand it created asks not to disown this family jewel. But the world has moved on. UG engineering teaching is taken care of by many. The focus is getting shifted to PG students (Masters and PhD guidance other than their coursework). But we do not have postdocs in our research lab.s. Thus, the canvas of the role of a teacher is huge (UG to PhD, taking care of academic and psychological needs of students from 18 year old to 30 year old in a walled campus). It encompasses interaction within and outside classroom, assignments, answer-script checking and other evaluations, minor and major projects ...
Getting funded projects and servicing them as per timeline and to the satisfaction of sponsors through project staffs coming from Tier-2 engineering colleges is a challenge. IIT faculty are supposed to serve various national level responsibilities by conducting various training programs for others, setting question papers of various kinds, serving various committees, evaluating and guiding funded projects conducted by others, establishing lab.s, setting curriculum etc.
There are review work for thesis, journal, conference articles, patent documents. There are recommendations to be given to current as well as ex-students applying to various places. There are research collaboration at national and international level and one needs to interact with collaborators, visit their places, host them. There are large no. of administrative responsibilities at Dept., Institute level and beyond. Some faculty members contribute by writing text/research books for which they have commitment to publishers and need to adhere to publication timeline. For IPs filed, one needs to explore commercialization opportunities.
Besides, in a rapidly changing technology space one needs to study oneself to keep one updated as regard to UG/PG courses being taught, the research work carried out by leading universities / lab.s / industry in his area of interest and the broad area.
Finally, they have a family to take care. They have passion for extra-curricular and society at large. They cannot take their health for granted. And they have 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week like everybody else :-)
How to switch from one task to another? Remember, you are handling youth, the best and brightest of the country, and the nation banks on them. One cannot be casual in one's approach. An insincere job will be hugely costly for the nation. Standing by each other, encouraging / motivating each other, sharing the vision and experience, building team spirit, excellence in work environment and the highly sought after freedom, friendly and supportive atmosphere are behind whatever little that could be done to face these challenges.
Thanks to all. The first and foremost is of course our excellent student community. No amount of praise is enough. If there is any aberration, it has more to do with inability to set a new goal once they enter IIT. Cracking IIT-JEE was dream from childhood. What next? Faculty, Parents, Alumni, Senior students, all need to work together to help the young 18 year old set the next goal, the next dream, and how to achieve it; switching to a new role and task. Next, parents / guardians have great respect for IIT system which helps. But there is more scope for them to engage with faculty advisor and monitor progress from 1st semester itself. Call it parent-teacher meeting akin to schools, call it any other thing - but they are important stake holders and are in a position to influence. We can sow dreams in them too, how much their ward can do and they can inspire / motivate in turn. The faculty and non-faculty colleagues are excellent. If someone does not feel the pressure, it is because of them. There is always a helping hand. People who are part of the support system who are drawn from neighbourhood - shopkeepers, maids, service staffs from electrical maintenance to sanitary have such a pleasing personality; it makes our job easier. No amount of 'Thanks' is sufficient for family members. They understand, appreciate our responsibilities. Rarely you will hear, "You have time to take care of others but your own kid."
On individual plane, I find that the lessons on Pratyhara and Dharana from study circles are helpful. An excellent article of Vivekananda can be found here (Link). The article is useful for everyone who wants mastery over mind and its various tricks.
For quite sometime I wanted to write something on changing social structure, family values ... desire for personal space, better things in life ... losing grip over of patience, tolerance .... the idea of 'self before everything else' ... till sometime back separated parents fought each other over custody of child, the other day the newspaper reported a case where none of the parents wants custody of the child as they separate (Link1, Link2)... it started with nuclear family concept which kept uncles, aunt out; then ageing father / mother were kept out; then husband wife stopped seeing each other, and now off-springs are obstacles to have 'good times' in life ... it appears that, the younger a person, the more is the ease and pace to disown a relationship and disregard advice / suggestion / feedback, the ego is higher ... it is so sad, it is so painful in the land where 'sacrifice' and 'service' were the twin pillars which held the society together ... need to ask, what we are getting educated at, are we not ignoring those family jewels ... can we call ourselves educated ... Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there .... The training by which the current and expression of will is brought under control and become fruitful is called education ... says Vivekananda.
My elder sister says that there were always challenges. But tolerance level was higher to tide over a crisis phase which is cyclic in nature. Now we have become more fragile. The relationships are casualty. We have breadth, but we lack in depth. We have knowledge, we lack wisdom. We are after Preya (pleasure driven) and not Shreya (welfare driven). We look for maximizing today, we do not care for investing in tomorrow. We care for matter, we do not care for spirit.
May we develop the strength of character which stands the trials of life, the test of time. May we all be blessed to overcome challenges being humane in our approach. May we be at peace with ourselves and society around.
We three colleagues were on our way to Kolkata. How to handle work pressure, various expectations was one of the topic in our journey. The wonderful teacher-student relationship, the respect IIT teachers command from students are largely due to devotion the students see among teachers, the amount of effort, the hours they put in, the multitudes of responsibilities they handle.
IITs started with an aim of providing right manpower to industries in post-independence era. UG teaching was the focus. The brand it created asks not to disown this family jewel. But the world has moved on. UG engineering teaching is taken care of by many. The focus is getting shifted to PG students (Masters and PhD guidance other than their coursework). But we do not have postdocs in our research lab.s. Thus, the canvas of the role of a teacher is huge (UG to PhD, taking care of academic and psychological needs of students from 18 year old to 30 year old in a walled campus). It encompasses interaction within and outside classroom, assignments, answer-script checking and other evaluations, minor and major projects ...
There are review work for thesis, journal, conference articles, patent documents. There are recommendations to be given to current as well as ex-students applying to various places. There are research collaboration at national and international level and one needs to interact with collaborators, visit their places, host them. There are large no. of administrative responsibilities at Dept., Institute level and beyond. Some faculty members contribute by writing text/research books for which they have commitment to publishers and need to adhere to publication timeline. For IPs filed, one needs to explore commercialization opportunities.
Finally, they have a family to take care. They have passion for extra-curricular and society at large. They cannot take their health for granted. And they have 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week like everybody else :-)
How to switch from one task to another? Remember, you are handling youth, the best and brightest of the country, and the nation banks on them. One cannot be casual in one's approach. An insincere job will be hugely costly for the nation. Standing by each other, encouraging / motivating each other, sharing the vision and experience, building team spirit, excellence in work environment and the highly sought after freedom, friendly and supportive atmosphere are behind whatever little that could be done to face these challenges.
Thanks to all. The first and foremost is of course our excellent student community. No amount of praise is enough. If there is any aberration, it has more to do with inability to set a new goal once they enter IIT. Cracking IIT-JEE was dream from childhood. What next? Faculty, Parents, Alumni, Senior students, all need to work together to help the young 18 year old set the next goal, the next dream, and how to achieve it; switching to a new role and task. Next, parents / guardians have great respect for IIT system which helps. But there is more scope for them to engage with faculty advisor and monitor progress from 1st semester itself. Call it parent-teacher meeting akin to schools, call it any other thing - but they are important stake holders and are in a position to influence. We can sow dreams in them too, how much their ward can do and they can inspire / motivate in turn. The faculty and non-faculty colleagues are excellent. If someone does not feel the pressure, it is because of them. There is always a helping hand. People who are part of the support system who are drawn from neighbourhood - shopkeepers, maids, service staffs from electrical maintenance to sanitary have such a pleasing personality; it makes our job easier. No amount of 'Thanks' is sufficient for family members. They understand, appreciate our responsibilities. Rarely you will hear, "You have time to take care of others but your own kid."
On individual plane, I find that the lessons on Pratyhara and Dharana from study circles are helpful. An excellent article of Vivekananda can be found here (Link). The article is useful for everyone who wants mastery over mind and its various tricks.
My elder sister says that there were always challenges. But tolerance level was higher to tide over a crisis phase which is cyclic in nature. Now we have become more fragile. The relationships are casualty. We have breadth, but we lack in depth. We have knowledge, we lack wisdom. We are after Preya (pleasure driven) and not Shreya (welfare driven). We look for maximizing today, we do not care for investing in tomorrow. We care for matter, we do not care for spirit.
May we develop the strength of character which stands the trials of life, the test of time. May we all be blessed to overcome challenges being humane in our approach. May we be at peace with ourselves and society around.
6 comments:
I think this is a big generalization. The old gold days nostalgia in most cases are not based on scientific evidence or statistics. First of all, the population was smaller, and there were no instant news so the stories of parents abundoning child were not instantantly available to the whole world. Second, as populaton is growing, I am not sure statistically such cases are growing. Are there any studies? Of course families were together, but that doesn’t mean all families members were happy. It depended on lot of sacrifies from women. There was a lot of politics and opression of weaker members inside such families. It depended on women spending all day in kitchen and had no way to follow their dreams. I hope IIT prof. will look things more scientifically instead of emotionally.
Thanks for your comment. Observation made here may be considered as one of the many samples by any social scientist. This is experience that spans three decades, of an individual who has been a part of Indian middle class dream. *** There are several studies, study on studies, looking at correlated issues, issues within issues. Being a part of academic fraternity my concern is more on education we impart to our students. It is proclaimed, "Education is the panacea." Which education? How are we empowering our children? To quote the article available in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2755141/
*** India is a country of children, adolescents, and young adults. It is not only the mental health needs of this 60% of the young population that we are addressing to, but also future generation's mental health. Prevention is better than cure. It is well known that adult psychopathology and mental health problems are only an extension of child mental health problems and continuum in psychopathology. It is not surprising that mentally disturbed parents produce mentally disturbed children, who in turn, will again grow into mentally disturbed adult. According to the World Mental Health Rights of Mentally ill (1998) - depression, suicide, alcoholism, and psychosis comprise of 75% of mental illnesses and hence they need special attention. Adult influence on child mental health is considerable. For the child this adult can be the protector, provider, legal guardian, custodian, or caretaker. A good quality-of-life for every child includes good housing, health services, financial stability, family environment, social network, practical coping skills, etc. Ninety percent of the children in India have a very poor quality-of-life. Child and adolescent mental health, which is future of our country, is given inadequate attention. As overall development of any country is dependent on positive mental development of its children, it is definitely the challenge of the day to cope up with poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, poor health, and hygiene that is crippling millions of children in India. Changing structure of the family, modernization, westernization, industrialization, globalization, and urbanization have negatively influenced child mental health.
There is no denying the fact that the problems faced by Indian families and children are many fold and has been on rise, but blaming everything to modern family structure is not scientific. Nothing is without its own cost and you can always find evidence to support or oppose any structure. In my anecdotal experience and opinion, the joint Indian family system is an opressive structure for half of its population.
Again, the last sentense in your comment does not establishes anything and its author's musing about the possible causes of mental illness. There may be 100 other causes of the problem. It maybe that the number of cases are not rising, but the people started to take medical attention whereas earlier these cases were going to local babas and devis who would give some ashes for the problem.It may be that rising population with reducing resources is genetically more prone to such problems. My point is that the overt generalization doesn’t serve the purpose of discussion.
last year I was in india, I noticed that the level of dust in all indian cities is really high because of huge constructions and new towns and colonies are without any trees. How this affect stress level and mental health is not clear. The simple solution could be to plant trees everywhere, but the awareness that our echo system affects our health and we all are responsible for it, is not there.
Thanks for sharing your observation and experience. Shall try to gather all my thoughts and put them in a new post.
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